Jo Grimond

Joseph " Jo " Grimond, Baron Grimond CH, CBE, PC ( born July 29 1913 in St Andrews, † 24 October 1993 in Kirkwall) was a British politician.

He was the son of Helen Lydia Grimond (nee Richardson ) and the Jutefabrikanten Joseph Bowman Grimond. His father died in 1928. Grimond studied thanks to a Brackenbury scholarship at Eton and at Balliol College, Oxford. His subjects were legal, political science and economics and philosophy. Robert Birley was one of his teachers. He graduated as a Barrister in 1935, was admitted to the bar in 1937.

He served in World War II, most recently as a major in the General Staff. For the European headquarters of UNRRA in 1947 he was head of personnel. In 1948 he acted as secretary of the National Trust for Scotland. In 1967 he became director of the Guardian.

After an initial election defeat in 1945, he was elected continuously from 1950 to 1992 for the constituency of Orkney and Shetland to parliament. He was the Whip of the Liberal Party from 1951 to 1957, 1956 to 1967 its president, the latter as a successor of Clement Davies. He sat down for Britain's entry into the EEC a, criticized the Allied Suez intervention and the British nuclear armament, and argued for more state involvement in social and education services. Transition, he took over the party leadership again in 1976, after the resignation of Jeremy Thorpe, to David Steel took office.

Under Grimonds leadership, the Liberals were able in 1959 to double the number of its votes. In the British electoral system but they brought it so that only six seats in Parliament. In 1964, nine in 1966 twelve mandates. Grimond was dissatisfied with the rate of gains, so he left office the party leadership. He had tried the Liberal Party should be positioned between the Conservatives and Labour, but experienced the realignment of Labour to the center, the part of those accompanied by significant vote gains.

In 1938 he married Laura Miranda, daughter of Violet Bonham - Carter, who him to the teachings of Herbert Henry Asquith, her grandfather, einschwor. He had four children. In 1983 he was elevated to Baron ( life peer), and from then sat in the House of Lords. Grimond died in 1993, now deaf, home of a stroke.

Works

• The Liberal Future ( 1959)
• The Liberal Challenge ( 1963)
• The Common Welfare (1978 )
• Memoirs ( 1979)
• A Personal Manifesto (1983 )
• Britain - a view from Westminster ( 1986)
• The St. Andrews of Jo Grimond (1992 )